


Mail Goblins and Borrowed Plates

by jestbee



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Getting Together, M/M, Strangers to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 13:33:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20583317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jestbee/pseuds/jestbee
Summary: Chris has a new flat with no furniture and a box of old things he's trying to avoid. Luckily, there's an interesting guy who lives just two doors down who might help him do that.





	Mail Goblins and Borrowed Plates

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a bit of fun, normal programming will resume shortly

Four walls and a grey carpet. It isn't much, but it's his now. 

There's a cardboard box acting as his coffee table, and a pillow from his futon acting as his chair. He's eating pizza out of the box and wiping greasy fingers on his dusty jeans. 

It isn't a great first night, but Chris gets through it. 

\- 

He's almost got all of his post redirected. He staring at yet another box with a strange address written in familiar handwriting. 

It's the last of everything from before.A box full of the things he didn't bring himself. Notebooks full of old memories and CDs with music he can no longer listen to.

He might just throw the entire box away. 

"Watch out for those mail goblins." 

Chris turns to look at green eyes and a forehead covered in riotous curls and wonders what he did in a previous life to deserve it. 

"Excuse me?"

"Mail goblins." He says this like it's perfectly explanatory and then when Chris doesn't offer any response, he finally follows it up. "You looked like the box was something to be afraid of." 

He has the decency to look a little sheepish, but he doesn't apologise. 

"Oh," Chris says, "right." 

"Are you new?"

Chris nods, and frowns at the box again. "Just moved in." 

"I'm PJ. I live in flat four." 

"Chris," Chris says, "Flat, um, six."

He tells himself he didn't need to look at the box one more time to remind himself. 

"Good to meet you, Chris. Welcome. Watch out for mail goblins." 

Chris watches him go, taking the stairs two at a time. He's kind of tall, and lanky, so the movement looks uncoordinated and Chris expects him to trip at any moment, but he doesn't.

Chris tucks the box under one arm. He takes the stairs one at a time, because that's all he can do. 

-

The effort he's putting in to avoiding the doorframe has more to do with his regard for the television he's currently carrying, than it does the chipped paintwork. 

He got it up a full flight of stairs but apparently it's this bit that's the issue.

It strikes him as ironic that his poor excuse for a flat only contains boxes, but the television he'd bought second hand from a Facebook post, didn't come with one. It isn't huge, and he'd put it under one arm for most of the journey, but the tight corner around which he needs to get to enter his flat, is proving a problem. 

"Need a hand?" 

Chris meets green eyes again and stumbles only a little bit. Large hands with deft fingers reach out to steady the appliance and together they get it into the tiny, sparse room he's calling home these days. 

He misses big windows, and daylight. His duvet is too thin and the carpet is scratchy under bare feet, not smooth and cool like his old wooden floors. 

He's ashamed that PJ has to see it, even though Chris doesn't owe him a good reception. 

"Thanks," Chris says as they lean the TV against one wall. 

PJ straightens up and looks around the room. Chris wants to hide but instead he pushes his shoulders back and lifts his chin. 

"Nice place," PJ says. 

"Yeah, I'm really going for that minimal look." 

That makes PJ laugh. It's a good laugh, warm and wide and lines appear at the corners of his mouth and in the creases of his eyes. 

Chris likes it. 

"No kidding," PJ says. 

"I'd offer you a drink or something but I don't have any kitchen stuff yet." 

PJ looks over at the doorway to the tiny galley kitchen like Chris might be exaggerating. 

"Do minimalists not eat?" PJ asks. 

"The smallest of portions," Chris says. "Barely at all, really." 

He's surprised that PJ laughs again. He doesn't know why it should be so surprising.

"Large pizzas contribute to your minimal lifestyle do they?" 

PJ nods towards the empty pizza box on his makeshift table. Chris doesn't have enough energy to be embarrassed by it. 

"Anything that doesn't require a plate," Chris says. 

PJ nods at him, those laugh lines deepening once again. It's been a long time since Chris made someone laugh like that. 

"Mail goblins still bothering you?" PJ asks. 

The box with his old life in sits in the far corner. He'd wanted to put it somewhere else, but he doesn't own any furniture in which to stash it. 

"Are you going to comment on everything in my house?" Chris says, deflecting. 

PJ hooks a glance over his shoulder, taking in the lack of anything else to comment on. "Think I have." 

"Ha bloody ha," Chris says. "If you're done mocking the new guy, I'll thank you for your help and ask that you leave." 

Chris doesn't deserve the final smile PJ shoots him as he does leave the flat, but he enjoys it anyway. 

-

_Knock knock_.

Chris answers the door with messy hair and the line of his pillow still in one cheek. 

"Oh," he says, instead of hello. 

PJ is in a long navy wool coat with wooden buttons. His hair is somewhat tamed and he's got a messenger bag slung across his body. It's early.

"Here," PJ says. "Not that I'm trying to divert you away from minimalism." 

Chris takes the bowl and the plate PJ offers him. They're white, simple and plain, but they still seem alien and unexpected. 

"They're not going to bite you," PJ says. 

"Plate goblins aren't a thing?" Chris asks. 

"Don't be stupid. Everyone knows the crockery king drove back the invasion of the plate goblins. There was much life lost on both sides, Chris, and frankly I'm appalled that you'd bring it up." 

Chris doesn't know what to make of the nonsensical ramblings of this odd, enigmatic man, so he doesn't offer any response except for a weak smile. 

"I just thought you could borrow them until you get set up," PJ says, finally. 

"Thanks." 

Chris holds the plate a little tighter and waves at PJ when he walks away. 

Having a bowl gives him enough energy to leave the house. He needs milk and cereal to put in it.

-

Chris takes the plate back a week later. He barely remembers his own address but for some reason he's got PJ's memorised. 

It's only two doors down. 

PJ answers the door wearing a paint-covered shirt and a pair of circular, tortoise shell glasses. 

"Plate," Chris says, holding it up. 

"Plate," PJ repeats, matching Chris's flat intonation. 

"I'm giving it back. I, er, bought some of my own." 

"Do you want to come in?" 

"Do you not remember where the plate goes?" Chris asks. 

"I remember," PJ says, "but you've taken him this far, you should probably escort him the rest of the way. Quite a culture shock coming back from minimalism I should imagine." 

Chris follows him in. It is a shock coming in here, even for Chris. 

There is so much colour, and odd trinkets. Fairy lights in multiple colours are strung everywhere and Chris is pretty sure there's a cloud hanging from the ceiling where the central light should be.

A stack of cardboard occupies the main space in the living room and there's a fully-working claw machine against the wall between the two windows PJ's flat has. 

It's cluttered, and colourful, and there is daylight streaming in through the open curtains. 

It should be enough to give Chris a headache, but he kind of likes it. 

"Here we go," PJ says, leading him into the kitchen and opening a cupboard. 

Chris slides the plate on top of the others. His hands feel strangely empty once it's gone. 

"Back to a life of full portions," PJ tells the plate, "no more meals of three peas and a slice of ham." 

"Do you... know what minimalism is?" Chris asks. 

PJ treats him to that laugh again. "Does it look like I do?" 

"What are you even doing?" Chris asks, back in the living room. He nudges the edge of a piece of cardboard with the tip of his shoe. 

"Making a rocket ship," PJ says, "Obviously."

"Obviously," Chris says, and doesn't ask any more.

-

Sometimes the walls of Chris's flat, although bare, are too much. They close in around him, looking nothing like the place he is used to and Chris wonders if he made the right decision with all of this after all. 

He takes to walking on those claustrophobic nights, the open sky pressing down on him just as much. 

Tonight, he isn't met with the usual quiet foyer on his way down. 

"Chris," PJ says.

There's a two-seater leather couch next to the mail boxes. It's intended, Chris assumes, for visitors, but tonight PJ is laid the length of it with his head on the seat cushion and his knees hooked over one arm. His feet swing above the tiled floor, back and forth. 

"Oh," Chris says. 

"You always say that." 

Chris shrugs, "You're always popping up places I don't expect." 

PJ swings around so that he's sat on the couch the way that it's intended. 

"Where are you going?" PJ asks. 

It's a fair question, Chris thinks, at midnight. 

"Dunno," Chris says, honestly. "Out. For a walk, I think." 

"Mind if I join you?" 

"Um." 

"There are paint fumes in my flat. I've opened the windows and I'm waiting for it to disperse. I could do with a walk to clear my head." 

Somehow, this fits with the picture Chris is creating of PJ. He's exactly the type of person to use harsh chemicals without proper ventilation. 

"Unless you'd rather be alone?"

PJ says this like he has no idea why anyone would want to do that. And the thing is, Chris isn't sure he does want to be alone. He's been alone, he's been doing it for a while now. 

He doesn't like it much.

"You can come," Chris says.

-

They end up at the beach. They don't go down on the sand, because it stretches out grey and ominous and PJ says it's probably a bad idea when Chris suggests it. 

"Not this time of year," PJ says. "Tides.

Chris nods like he understands what PJ means and instead they walk along the pier. The boards feel springy beneath their feet and Chris has to keep his eyes averted because the sight of the water rushing below through the gaps in the wood makes him dizzy. 

"This is an alright view," PJ says, sinking onto a bench right at the end. 

If the railings weren't there, Chris imagines it would look like they were sitting on the edge of the world. 

Inky, black sea undulates under a navy sky, the tips of each crest lit by a stark, white moon. There's a film of cloud, not enough to obscure it, but just enough to diffuse the light so that everything is soft and ethereal. 

It picks out the edges of PJ's profile, bouncing off the waves in his hair mirroring those Chris can hear crashing below them. 

Chris is about to make a very bad decision, he can tell. 

"It's... yeah." Chris says. 

He isn't even looking at the view. 

"It's too quiet," PJ says, "I feel like we're going to be attacked by murderous sea pirates." 

"Sea pirates?" Chris repeats. 

"Hm." 

"As opposed to... other kinds of pirates?" 

"Space pirates," PJ says, "Obviously. And desert pirates. There are pirates for all terrain." 

"Obviously." Chris responds. 

PJ glances over to him out of the corner of his eye, and smirks. 

"You always say that." 

"Well it is obvious..." PJ says, "to me." 

"Not to the rest of us. I think your brain works differently." 

"Would that be a bad thing?" 

Chris shrugs. He lifts his feet to rest them on the horizontal railing. The night is chilly and he tucks his jacket a little closer around himself. 

"I dunno. Being in a fantasy world sounds like it'd be useful a lot of the time. Beats being here. Are you ever here?" 

"I dunno," PJ says. The wind picks up his hair and it's in his eyes. He doesn't look away though. "Are you?"

"I'm here," Chris says. "God knows why… but I am."

PJ shifts on the bench and it presses their shoulders together. Chris contemplates moving, but PJ's coat is warm, smelling faintly of the paint in his flat. He holds himself still.

"Was Brighton not your first choice?" 

"Who says I wasn't born and raised here?" Chris asks.

"Your accent," PJ responds. "For one. But also you wanted to go on the beach at this time of night so I'm assuming you haven't been here that long." 

"I'm a man of danger. I like a risk."

PJ cocks an eyebrow at him. Chris is definitely going to make a bad decision.

Chris doesn't want to talk about Brighton anymore. He doesn't want to go back to the bare bones of his flat, he doesn't even really want to sit on this cold bench and look out at an infinite abyss.

He doesn't know what he wants. 

Leaning over into PJ's space is as good a thing to do as any. PJ accepts his presence without question and without saying anything about goblins or pirates or any other mythical creatures. He meets Chris's lips and doesn't ask why he's doing it. 

He just lets Chris kiss him and presses cold fingers to the side of his neck in return. 

-

The wind ruffles Chris's hair and a shiver runs down his back. He feels the goosebumps break out over his arms and PJ pulls back. 

He isn't sure how long they've been kissing but they're colder than before, PJ's cheeks are pink with it. His lips are pink too, velvet-soft and shimmering with wet where Chris's mouth has been. 

"Do you want--" PJ starts. 

"Yes." 

Chris doesn't wait for the end of the sentence, because whatever it is PJ is offering has got to be better than the inside of his flat with it's tiny rooms and empty walls.

PJ leads him back up the pier by his hand. He's tall and even though Chris is too PJ walks with a longer gait and Chris has to hurry to keep up. It sends his blood rushing round his body, stirring impatience in him to be somewhere else, anywhere else. 

It's the colourful chaos of PJ's flat that greets them. Paint fumes still linger in the air and Chris isn't sure if it's the scent of it that is going right to his head, or just the sensation of PJ's teeth on his neck. 

He breathes hot over PJ's temple and goes easily when he's steered towards the bedroom. 

The same stark moon from the pier cuts a sharp, white line over the odds and ends of PJ's flat and Chris makes a bad decision that in that moment, doesn't feel bad at all. 

-

Chris has one leg back in his jeans.

"Do you drink tea?" 

PJ blinks at him from the bed. He's sleep-ruffled and lovely, the curve of a bare shoulder poking out from beneath blue sheets. 

"Tea?" 

"Hot beverage, comes from steeping leaves and other things in water. It's quite nice here on this planet. Do they have it where you're from?" 

Chris finishes closing the button on his jeans and drops back onto the edge of the bed. His feet are bare, and he isn't doing anything to correct that. 

"Where am I from?" he asks. 

"Not sure," PJ says, "Saturn? Pluto? Maybe some far off planet we don't have a name for yet. Either way, I'm pretty sure it's not..." 

"What?" 

PJ waves him off and gets out of bed. Chris doesn't blush, but his cheeks do feel hot and he looks away as PJ stretches his arms up. Unashamed, bared. Chris can't imagine being so free with it. 

"Tea?" PJ repeats. 

"Show me this earthly thing you call tea," Chris laughs. 

PJ doesn't smile as widely as he usually does, but he makes the tea. 

-

The thing about bad decisions is that they catch up with you. 

Chris suffers through the most uncomfortable cup of tea he's ever had and then retreats to his own flat. He doesn't even put his shoes on, just picks them up into his hands and pads back down the hallway without them. 

His flat is still as bare and awful as before, and PJ's bowl is still on his draining board. He has his own plates now, and a fork or two, but he'd felt like he still needed the bowl. 

His TV is still on the floor, plugged into the wall and working, but adrift in the centre of an empty room. Across from it is a single cushion where Chris spends his nights, and the cardboard box he's been using as a coffee table. 

In the corner, the mail goblin mocks him.

He drops his shoes on the floor, shoves his feet into them. He doesn't both with the laces, just pokes them down the side against the arch of his foot and deals with them digging into him.

The box doesn't put up a fight as he grips it in his hands, it doesn't struggle as he descends the stairs, down, down into the basement. It doesn't yell or do anything much at all as he slings it with some force into the back of one of the large building's bins. 

Almost as if the goblin hadn't been a threat in the first place.

He only looks at it for a second after it's gone, and then he drags himself out onto a brightly lit street, and sets off walking. 

-

PJ doesn't knock at his door for a week. 

Chris doesn't dwell on the relief in his chest when he opens it, he doesn't immediately tell PJ that he'd been thinking of taking the bowl round to his house just for an excuse to see him. 

Instead, he says, "Oh," and misses it when PJ doesn't smile. 

"You got furniture," is what PJ says, looking past his left shoulder and into the flat beyond. 

Chris opens the door a little wider and PJ crosses the threshold. Maybe they're both surprised that he does because PJ's face looks alarmed once he's inside. 

"Yeah," Chris says, "Minimalism was so boring." 

"Nice." 

It isn't too nice. It's mostly all flat pack stuff, and it had taken him only a week to sort out the whole thing. Nothing matches, but Chris doesn't really feel like it has to. It's just nice to sit on something that isn't the floor, and have a real coffee table instead of the box. 

He kept the futon because he's gotten used to sleeping lower to the ground and it's a thing he wouldn't have been able to do in his old place. 

"Can I get you a drink?" Chris says, "Tea?" 

"Tea?"

Chris grins at him, "I have accepted your earthly customs." 

Pj's lips part like he wants to say something, but he snaps them shot half a second later and just nods. 

"Make yourself at home," Chris says. 

He doesn't know if PJ does, because he escapes to the kitchen.

-

Chris thinks maybe he deserve the silent treatment. What he doesn't deserve, is PJ coming all the way to his house to subject him to it. This cup of tea is almost as awkward as the one the morning after, so Chris needs to put a stop to it. 

"Out with it then," he says. 

"What?" 

"The yelling. Or, whatever it is." Chris sips what is left of his tea and it makes a slurping sound. "I can take it." 

He raises a cheeky eyebrow and wishes PJ would laugh. He doesn't, though. 

"Do you ever take anything seriously?" PJ says. 

"Me?" 

PJ gestures to him with the flat of his palm like Chris is being deliberately obtuse. 

"That's rich coming from Mr. Space Pirates and Mail Goblins." 

"Not my official title," PJ says, his face stony, "but carry on." 

"Well it's just all a bit ironic, isn't it. You come at me for not being all...whatever, when I literally know nothing about you." 

"And I know all your deepest secrets," PJ says, "Obviously." 

"Right," Chris says. He stands up and takes his mug to the kitchen. PJ's is nearly empty too but he doesn't take that. He lets him hang onto it for a second because despite him walking away, he doesn't actually want PJ to leave. "Obviously."

There's a beat of silence as Chris rinses the dregs of tea down the drain and upturns his mug on the draining board. The bowl is still there.   
"I should go," PJ says, from behind him. 

Chris turns in his tiny kitchen. He's got a microwave now, and pans and a knife block, he almost looks like a functioning person living in a space that's entirely his. But he still can't get anything right. 

"What do you want to know?" Chris asks.

"What am I allowed to know?" 

Chris takes PJ's mug and turns back to the sink to rinse it out. "Allowed implies there's some things you aren't allowed to know." 

"Are there?" 

"I once killed a man," Chris deadpans. 

He laughs at his own joke, which is knows is completely stupid, and pushes his fringe out of his eyes with wet fingers. PJ's hand tugs at the back of his elbow. 

"I'm serious," PJ says. 

Chris takes a breath, meeting green eyes and messy hair and wondering, not for the first time, what he did in a previous life to deserve this. 

Something good, maybe. 

"None of it is interesting," Chris says. "You're allowed to know whatever you want." 

This time PJ leans in, and Chris accepts their mouths pressing together without question. 

-

PJ says the futon is too low down, but Chris likes being this far away from the ceiling. He's at the exact angle to his window that he can see a full picture of the sky. The sun has dipped, the horizon painted with suffused watercolours of pinks and oranges as it starts to disappear.

"Go on then," PJ says. 

He's sat with his head against the wall and Chris is face down in his pillow. PJ is drawing something elaborately detailed on his back with the soft tips of his fingers. 

"Go on what?" Chris says. 

His voice is slurred, sleepy. PJ is all warm naked skin pressed against the length of him and their legs are hooked together at the ankle. He runs his toe up the underside of PJ's foot and giggles when he squirms. 

"Tell me something," PJ says, pressing his foot back into the same spot. 

"What kind of something?" 

Chris doesn't have the energy to keep any of it back. Not that he really wants to, maybe. 

"Where were you before here?" 

"My sister's attic." 

"Chris," PJ says, softly. His fingers stall and Chris lifts a shoulder to encourage them to move again. 

"I'm being serious," Chris says. "Before here I was staying at my sister's house in here converted loft. Before that…" 

"Before that?" his fingers start moving again and Chris doesn't mean to sigh, but he does. 

"Before that I lived with my boyfriend." 

"Oh." 

Chris flips onto his back and looks up at PJ. His face looks different from this angle, upside down and softer, somehow. 

"You're right," Chris says, "that is annoying." 

PJ digs a pillow out from behind his back and drops it on Chris's face. Chris sheds it and then rolls over to over PJ's body with his own. 

"It was a long time ago," Chris says. "And neither of us were happy for a while before that. I'm over it, I'm here in this flat because of that, I didn't move because I was pining or broken-hearted. I'm not someone that needs fixing." 

PJ kisses him, once. It's a little hard, and there is a frisson of teeth along his bottom lip, but then he pulls away. 

"Was he the… mail goblin?" 

Chris laughs, and PJ's hands are on his back, palms pressed against his shoulder blades. 

"Anyway," Chris says, only slightly distracted by all the skin on offer, "that's the whole long, boring story. I wanted a new start and the… shiny lights of Brighton drew me in." 

"You don't miss it?" 

"The fancy flat with wooden flooring and huge windows? God yes." Chris wiggles so that their bodies are aligned again, chest to chest and knees to knees. PJ is warm and soft all over. "Him? No. Kind of enjoying it right… here." 

PJ pushes his fingers into the hair at the back of Chris's head.

"What about you?" Chris asks. 

"Oh here and there," PJ says, "mostly here. No ex-boyfriends or anything, or well, none of note anyway."

"How boring," Chris says, "how is a boy supposed to stay interested when you offer up such a mind-numbing backstory." 

"I'll give you a backstory," PJ says, and rolls them over. 

Chris's laugh bounces off his ceiling and drifts out of the window into the darkening night. 

-

The thing about boring backstories is that it just means the exciting part hasn't started yet. Brighton isn't so bad. 

There are no bright lights in Brighton, not really, but his flat has furniture and there's a great guy who lives down the hall. He has his own sets of plates that, at times, get mixed up with PJ's when they take each other snacks. 

He has four walls and a grey carpet, but it turns out that might have just been the start.


End file.
